Advocacy @ the Speed of Thought

I am having huge amounts of fun with
Link: Bill Gates - Business @ the Speed of Thought. The book is a fun riff from a true genius at the very edge of reshaping business and integrating technology into a company.

Bill is pretty clear that the big shifts are not technology driven but strategic thinking shifts. I am reading the book to see what translates to the environmental movements, party or advocacy contexts. It is pretty rich in pointing out the places we can improve as a an alliance of groups.

The goal of knowledge management is to increase corporate IQ by sharing history and current knowledge. Executives must lead the way, establishing open communications and proper tools.

Online tools solve training problems. Sharing information is key to recruiting and retaining smart people. Global access to information doesn't mean centralized management. The CEO must foster a collaborative, knowledge-sharing corporate culture, provide the digital tools, and reward knowledge sharing.

The current management and competitive nature of the fractionalized specialty movement actually foster the opposite. Much of the leadership in the movement are hippie luddites that cut their expertise in the 1960s-1970s. there is a pride in technical ineptness.

Knowledge management as I use it here is not a software product or a software category. Knowledge management doesn't even start with technology. It starts with business objectives and processes and a recognition of the need to share information. Knowledge management is nothing more than managing information flow, getting the right information to the people who need it so that they can act on it quickly.

So...How many activists feel that the business objective of the movements leadership at state, regional and national level contains a strategic approach to share information? Which Senators are leaning toward clean air, fighting conservative judges, etc.? What arguments persuade elected officials on the value of clean air standards in Georgia or Washington State? When national group fundraising staff find out that a foundation is interested in more local groups proposals who is that shared? When local groups understand a donor is looking for more professional and science based approach to landscape issues do they feed it to national organizations? (Sometimes..but is there a system? )

The workers in a company with a high corporate IQ collaborate effectively so that all of the key people on a project are well informed and energized. ...

To recruit and retain smart people, you need to make it easy for them to collaborate with other smart people. That makes for a stimulating, energized workplace. A collaborative culture, reinforced by information flow, makes it possible for smart people all over a company to be in touch with each other. When you get a critical mass of high-IQ people working in concert, the energy level shoots way up. Cross-stimulation brings on new ideas-and less experienced employees are pulled along to a higher level. The company as a whole works smarter.

Yeah...the movement could use some of that.

Bill summarizes the lessons of chapter 14 with a few zingers ..

"a company's ability to respond to unplanned events, good or bad, is a prime indicator of its ability to compete."

"Strategically a major function of the CEO is to look for bad news and encourage the organization to respond to it. Employees must be encouraged to share bad news as much as the good news. "

"Reward worthy failure--experimentation."

And then ask three strategic questions that the leadership of the movement should address...(ill edit for this context)

Do your systems enable you to learn about bad news anywhere in the movement and communicate it quickly?

Do your systems enable you to assemble the necessary data and get teams working on the solutions quickly?

Can you put together virtual teams from separate departments and geographies?

The movement fails these test. Groups don't share polling data, data on elected officials, funders or decision makers in office or corporate world. The movement doesn't share insights on reporters or campaigns. Bad news is spun even to other allies in the movement. There are very poor systems that enable collaboration across organizations, geographies and regional focuses.

The bad news is that it sounds like all bad news for the movement if we continue "As is". The great news is that there is a new road map and strategy for us to pursue once we tire of the current results.

Strategically focus on building a network-centric movement. Focus on the connections across the departments of progressive politics and public interest work. build a well planned communications grid among allied interests, a open and transparent reputation system for volunteers and staff and define new more flexible ownership rights around intellectual property, hardware and staff skills.